Yoshida: Indie games can be system-sellers

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Journey and its contemporaries are leading gaming into a bright future, says Sony

Indie games can sell consoles, and will play a major factor in tipping the scales in the coming generation, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida believes.

The PlayStation-makers’ head of Worldwide Studios and indie visionary told Develop at Gamescom last month that fresh ideas from indie talent is where he sees the next big system-sellers emerging.

“I think Journey is a system seller in terms of the impact it makes. It may not be that people buy a PS3 to play Journey – but they hear about other people playing it, he told Develop.

“It proves the breadth of the platform, and I think it proves to non-gamers how broad games can be. That’s a wonderful thing.”

Minecraft is possibly the best example of an indie game that has built up enough momentum for it to generate huge interest among platform holders of all kinds. The game is now on mobiles, desktops and will be coming to both Sony and Microsoft’s next-gen consoles.

Yoshida went on assert that if the industry only chooses to pursue big budget triple-A projects it “doesn’t have a bright future”.

PlayStation 4 has a number of indie projects lined up for it, including Mike Bithell’s Volume, Guns of Icarus by Muse Games and Switch Galaxy Ultra by Atomicom.